LäsloggHär skall jag registrera intressanta saker som jag läser, för att lättare kunna hitta tillbaka i efterhand. Datum, titel och kort beskrivning av vad som är intressant skall ges.

2016-09-12Smith. “The Origins of Descartes' Concept of Mind in the Regulae ad directionem ingenii”

Här en väldigt lång och bra genomgång av hela diskussionen av Regulae som text, samt om den går att använda som material för tolkning av Descartes. Tillbakavisar – träffande och övertygande – den tidigare vedertagna teorin om verkes uppkomst- och kompositionshistoria.

2016-09-14Livesey. “William of Ockham, the Subalternate Sciences, and Aristotle's Theory of Metabasis”

Tematiserar den medeltida matematiseringen av kvaliteter, samt hur denna förhåller sig till Aristoteles tes om ”metabasis” (att vetenskaper är bundna till sina genus och att metoder därför inte kan överföras mellan dem). Tar upp underordnandet av vetenskaper undra andra (optik under geometri, etc.), som även Aristoteles tillåter, dock som undanta. (Tänk på att Dear i Discipline and Experience tematiserar scientiae mediae).“Ockham has in a sense turned Aristotle’s prohibition upside down. For Aristotle, the prohibition was to apply to most sciences taken in the customary sense of the word; cross-genus demonstrations among the subalternate sciences were viewed as the narrow exception to the rule.” (133)“Albert, no less than Ockham or any other medieval scholar, ultimately concedes that Aristotle was correct in principle for condemning metabasis in scientific work, but his ideas about applying that prohibition have changed markedly. It was Aristotle's conviction that the overwhelming majority of the sciences are autonomous and therefore must be free of metabasis. Under Ockham and Albert's interpretation, the most distinct sciences are eo ipso autonomous and avoid metabasis, while other sciences which had been autonomous formerly are now elevated to the class of subalternating or in Albert's words, 'communicating'-sciences. This transformation was not accomplished by changing the theory of metabasis, but rather by changing the lenses under which the sciences were viewed. For Aristotle, the prohibition of metabasis was the rule and subalternation the exception; for Ockham and his colleagues, subalternation became the rule and metabasis the exception.” (145)

Funkenstein. Theology and the Scientific Imagination, 35-7

Tar upp temat med “metabasis” (som ibland kallas “the principle of incommunicability of genera), och beskriver den bra (samt ger relevanta referenser).” In contrast to this assumption that nature could be classified according to an unequivocal order of concepts, Aristotle by no means assumed that nature was homogeneous. On the contrary: the universe is thought of as a hierarchy of forms, of different qualities which characterize different regions of the universe. Aristotle’s nature is a ladder of natures. / The phenomena of nature are governed by different kinds of "causes" or principles. They are many and different for each segment of nature, even though their number "should not be increased without necessity." Science, too, cannot be any more uniform than its subject matter; the translation of methods from one science to another leads only to category-mistakes (…).In the name of this injunction Aristotle repudiated, as we saw, Plato's belief in an overarching science (dialectics), as well as Plato's "eidetic numbers" that guarantee the order and connection of ideas, and also Plato's geometrization of the universe. The injunction against metabasis stands in sharp contrast to the seventeenth-century ideal of a uniform science and its practice of trying the principles of mechanics on every subject for size.” (36-7)Ser vi en motsvarighet till denna indelning av vetenskaperna i Husserls idé om ”ontologiska regioner”?

Rabouin. “Mathematics and Imagination in Early Modern Times: Descartes and Leibniz’ mathesis universalis in the light of Proclus’ Commentary of Euclid’s Elements”

Livesey. Metabasis: The Interrelationship of the Sciences in Antiquity and the Middle AgesScholz, Heinrich. Mathesis universalis. Abhandlung zur Philosophie als strenger Wissenschaft.

Nämns av Funkenstein som viktiga källor rörande tesen om metabasis.

Rabouin. ”On Mathematical Style”Verkar intressant om ”matematisk stil”. Tar upp, och vill behandla, frågan om stilens epistemologiska betydelse.

Mancosu “Mathematical style”Samma tema som ovan. Nämns av Rabouin.

Mancosu, Jörgensen, Pedersen (red.). Visualization, Explanation and Reasoning styles in Mathematics

Samma tema som ovan.

Mancosu. The Adventure of Reason: Interplay Between Philosophy of Mathematics and Mathematical Logic, 1900-1940

Har en sektion (men några kapitel) om fenomenologi och vetenskap, där bland annat Weyl står i centrum.

Zittel. Theatrum philosophicum: Descartes und die Rolle ästhetischer Formen in der Wissenschaft

Om Descartes extensiva användning av bilder.

Epple, Zittel (red.). Science as Cultural Practice : Vol. I: Cultures and Politics of Research from the Early Modern Period to the Age of Extremes

Roux. “Was there a Cartesian Experimentalism in 1660s France?”Tar upp den – till synes (givet den bild vi hara v Descartes) – paradoxala frågan om experimentalism hos Descartes.

Dobre & Nyden (red.) Cartesian EmpiricismBoken som Roux är del av. Lär behandla frågan ingående.Kap. 1, n. 1 nämner en hel rad källor som de senaste 35 åren har nyanserat bilden av Descartes påstådda rationalism.Inledningen innehåller en intressant beskrivning och problematisering av hur såväl filosofihistoria som vetenskapshistoria har präglats av en stark uppdelning mellan empirism och rationalism, som visserligen luckrats upp bland experter, men som håller ett ganska starkt grepp på andra. Poängen med att studera ”cartesianska empirister” är att de just är sådana göra att denna uppdelning bryter samman.

Harrison, The Fall of ManTar upp skepticism hos ex. Gassendi och menar att detta, snarare än att vara ett ”verkligt problem”, utgör ett vapen mot Aristoteliker. S. 84, n. 128 ger källor som stöder en sådan läsning. Detta bör gälla även för Descartes.

Brundell. Pierre Gassendi: From Aristotelianism to a New Natural Philosophy

En av Harrisons källor rörande Gassendi.”The best weapon that Gassendi found for his fight against Aristotelianism was scepticism, and for that reason he was a sceptic. His scepticism was a legacy of Renaissance anti-Aristotelianism: it was inspired by the popular, but theologically suspect, writings of Pierre Charron, and was specifically anti-Aristotelian, following the example and relying heavily on the methods of Ramus and Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola.” (139; se 137-42)

Smith. “Science on the Move: Recent Trends in the History of Early Modern Science”

“The history of philosophy has also contributed to a reevaluation of some of the most iconic figures of the Scientific Revolution, as a new generation of historians of philosophy, including Gary Hatfield, Dennis Des Chene, Stephen Gaukroger,

Susan James, and Daniel Garber, have helped to rewrite the traditional views of René Descartes (1596–1650) and Francis Bacon (1561–1626) as the first moderns. Examination of Descartes's Treatise on the Passions (1649), of his correspondence with the Princess Palatine Elisabeth (1618–80) on the passions and the mind, of his medical work, and of his relationship to practitioners is bringing about a new era in the study of Descartes. Matthew Jones's recent work has contributed to this reexamination. Jones argues that the central concern of his three protagonists — Descartes, Blaise Pascal (1623–62), and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) — was, like other early modern scholars, the philosophical cultivation of the life of virtue, and that they viewed mathematics and natural philosophy as powerful tools for living the virtuous life. In turn, these concerns shaped their study of mathematics and natural philosophy. In arguing that self-cultivation fueled the dynamism in natural and mathematical knowledge in the early modern period, Jones builds on recent work in the history of early modern science, such as that of Mario Biagioli, Lorraine Daston, Simon Schaffer, Steven Shapin, and others, who have shown that etiquette, sociability, and civility were central to developing the new experimental philosophy. / One of the most influential trends in the history of protoscience has been the work emerging from the Max Planck Institute along the lines of their mission to explore “historical epistemology.” Jürgen Renn's volume, Galileo in Context, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison's Objectivity, Daston's current research project on observation, and M. Norton Wise's edited collection on precision follow this approach, as do recent works on the protophases of scientific theories and concepts, including Peter Dear for physics and Domenico Bertoloni Meli for mechanics, the latter of which focuses on the role of material objects in the transformation of the science of mechanics.”

Hacking. Historical Ontology“the very notion of philosophy coming packed in ‘problems’ of free will, induction, and so fort, may itself be an invention of the early twentieth entury. Since I like fraudulently precise dates, I have long been saying that ‘the problem’ as a definitive of a mode of philosophizing was canonized in English around 1910 with titles by G. E. Moore, William James, and Bertrand Russell” (12) Se även kap. 2.

2016-09-15Decyk. “Cartesian Imagination and Perspectival Art”

Vill koppla samman filosofi- och konsthistoria, och mer specifikt, till de optiska experiment och framsteg som gjordes av konstnärer som Da Vinci, Dürer och Niceron. Kan vara intressant för min diskussion av Descartes användning av

perspektivmetaforen för att förklara perception (som ej är ”lik”, men likväl representerar).

Buchenau. The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment: The Art of Invention ...

ss. 30ff behandlar Wolffs kritik av tidigare former av “art of invention/discovery” (Descartes, Leibniz, etc.)

Denna bok har en bra inledande översikt över olika former av ”art of invention” under tidigmodern tid.

Kan vi säga att Kant begränsar – i förhållande till Wolff? – logiken som en ”art of discovery”, och således sätter empirin som vägen framåt; samt att endast inom matematiken kan vi ha en ren upptäckningskonst, i och med att vår kunskap ständigt utvidgas? I sin Logik och i reflektioner, säger Kant att logiken inte är en uppfinningskonst, endast ett medel för kunskapskritik, eller kritik av förnuftet.

Kants ’kritik’ kan ses som en slags ’medicina mentis’, och och med att den rensar ut förutfattade meningar, och disciplinerar förnuftsbruket (och visar varför logik som upptäckningskonst inte funkar).

Obs. Kap. 10 handlar om Kant.

Strauss. ”Plato’s Gorgias (1963): Session 14”“I believe there have been quite a few people throughout the ages who have understood Plato and not only a few in each generation. But what I stand for can indeed be said as follows: that in the last hundred fifty years the notion of what it means to read, say, Plato, has been lost. And the crudest reason, of course, has to do with history. When you would read [Dodds’] commentary, or any other commentary, you would see the concern is much more, “Where did he get it from?” There is a myth: “Is this Orphic, is this Pythagorean, is it...?” As if this were of the slightest interest. The only thing of interest is: What does this myth convey? And what does Plato put it in for? Obviously. Very rarely, such extraneous information can be of some help. But to make it the main point is strictly absurd. Or we want to read Plato not in order to become better human beings, wiser human beings, but in order to know something about Greek culture, ya? Well, who cares for Greek culture? [Laughter] I mean, who [cares], who knows that he is a mortal

being and has only a short life? It will not be [something he will] care for. I must really use this simple language. He will care for the salvation of his soul and not for extraneous things. There may be an accidental connection between that [and] knowing something about the Greeks. You know, for example, if it is necessary to study Plato, I believe it is necessary that some men, at least, should study Greek grammar and this kind of thing. That’s obvious. But you know that must never become emancipated. That is an absolutely ministerial art, ya? But your simple and straightforward question, I liked very much. I think we must make clear this thing. But the scandal, I believe, is this: that, not you, but this learned commentator doesn’t even reflect for one moment on the fact. I haven’t looked at the older commentators. A friend of mine who has written a book on the Meno—some of you know him, Mr. Klein at St. John’s—has read the whole commentary literature on the Meno of the last century. And he came to the conclusion that, say, around 1890, a complete change in level—down, going down—has taken place. So I have not looked up the older commentators, say, in the early nineteenth century or perhaps still older, whether they say something about that. That I could not say. But there is no question that such a decline has taken place. Surely.” (345-6)

2016-09-16

Hallyn. The Poetic Structure of the World: Copernicus and Kepler

Hallyn. Les structures rhétoriques de la science

Carriero. Between Two Worlds

“Here it is important to recognize that although Descartes may be the father of modern epistemology, he does not think of clear perception as the possession of a standing “justification.” For Descartes, clear perception is a way of seeing that something is so. What achieving scientia enables me to do is to understand (now) why if I have (sometime in the past) perceived clearly that something is so, it is so. (One might say that scientia converts past clear perception into a sort of justification, although I do not think Descartes himself puts the matter that way.)” (354)“Scientia , in the Aristotelian tradition, involves both certainty and systematic understanding. The same is true for Descartes. Even so, Descartes’s handling of scientia is quite novel. To appreciate this, consider his suggestion, just explored, that there is a grade of certainty available to the geometer that involves extra-geometrical considerations. This marks a striking

break with Aristotelian thinking about scientia. For Aristotelians, the certainty associated with scientia was supposed to flow from the first principles of a particular subject matter through to the conclusion. (These first principles, although better known in themselves, are not necessarily better known to us; particular geometrical propositions may be more obvious to us than the basic principles of geometry that account for them.) As the geometer sees how the theorem flows from principles that are, on reflection, self-evident, her knowledge becomes more certain. Here the certainty associated with scientia is acquired through a better command of one’s discipline. Descartes claims, as we have seen, that there is a fuller grade of certainty available to the geometer than this, that comes from her understanding of her nature as a cognitive being and its place within the universe that she knows. This is, in effect, to require as a part of the systematicity involved in scientia that there be a chapter that explains one’s position as a knower.” (354)

Jolley. “Scientia and Self-Knowledge in Descartes”“And there were other grounds for dethroning the syllogism from the prominent position it had held for Aristotle. It had never been plausible to claim that Euclidean proofs were syllogistic in form, yet in the early modern period such proofs were widely regarded as paradigm examples of demonstration.” (85)“The need for God in Descartes’s theory of knowledge, and the sense in which all knowledge can be said to depend on him, now begins to emerge. For although we can have some knowledge without God (the knowledge of epistemically self-guaranteeing propositions), such knowledge would never, so to speak, get us anywhere. It would last only as long as the relevant proposition, or set of propositions, was actually being attended to. . ..Once we have arrived at the proposition that God exists and is not a deceiver, then at last the possibility of developing a systematic body of knowledge becomes available.” (Carriero, inledning till Conversation with Burman, xxxi-ii citerad 87)

Gaukroger. “The Nature of Abstract Reasoning”Tar upp vad Descartes framsteg i matematik består i. Samt diskuterar frågan om hur matematiken kan appliceras på naturen.

Schüling . Die Geschichte der axiomatischen Methode im 16. und beginnenden 17. Jahrhundert : Wandlung der Wissenschaftsauffassung

Kolla referenser nedan. Handlar om viljan att omstöpa Euklides i syllogistisk form.

Engelfriet. Euclid in China: The Genesis of the First Chinese Translation of Euclid's

ss. 43ff: handlar om syllogistisk form och Euklides. Hänvisar till Schüling, pp. 53-9, 42, 88-9

2016-09-17

Merrill. Augustus De Morgan and the Logic of Relations

ss.13-5: nämner försöken att överföra Euklides I syllogismer, och menar att det misslyckas. Citerar intressanta passager.”what were connected by Theon with acute brevity are here more widely spread and more openly rendered.” (Citerat s. 13) Man täntke att Theon hade tagit bort den syllogistiska formen.

Barrow. The Usefulness of Mathematical Learning Explained and Demonstrated

2016-09-18

Leibniz. “Critical Thoughts on the General Part of the Principles of Descartes” i Philosophical Papers and Letters

“I do not admit that errors are more dependent upon the will than upon the intellect. To give credence to what is true or to what is false - the former being to know, the latter to err - is nothing but the consciousness or memory of certain perceptions or reasons and so does not depend upon will except insofar as we may be brought by some oblique device to the point where we seem to see what we wish to see, even when we are actually ignorant. See Article 6. Hence we make judgments not because we will but because something appears. And when it is said that will reaches further than intellect, this is more ingenious than true; to put it bluntly, it is a bit of popular ornamentation. We will only what appears to the intellect. The source of all errors is precisely the same in its own way as the reason for errors which is observed in arithmetical calculation. For through a lack of attention or memory it often happens that we do what we ought not, or fail to do what we ought, or that we think that we have done what we did not do, or have not done what we have. So it happens in calculations (to which reasoning corresponds in the mind) that necessary figures are not put down but unnecessary ones are, or that something is skipped in the combination, or that the method is not duly

observed. For when our mind is tired or distraught, it does not adequately attend to its present operations, or it assumes by an error of memory that something was long since proved which has become more firmly fixed in us only because it was more frequently impressed, or more fixedly considered, or more eagerly desired. The remedy for our errors is the same as that for errors in calculation - to pay attention to the matter and form, to proceed slowly, to repeat and vary our operations, to introduce tests and checks, to divide longer chains of reasoning into parts so that the mind gets a breathing spell, and to confirm each part in turn through special proofs. And since we are sometimes in a hurry to act. it is an important matter to have acquired presence of mind through practice, as do those who are still able, in the midst of noise and without written calculations, to compute very large numbers. Thus the mind will not be easily distracted, whether by the external senses or by its own images and affections, but will rise above what it is doing and retain the power of criticism or as it is commonly called, of reflecting upon itself, so that it can constantly say to itself, as would an external monitor, 'Watch what you are doing. Why are you doing it? Time is passing.' The Germans use the excellent term: sich begreifen; the French, the equally happy one: s'aviser, as if to warn one's self, to suggest to one's self, as the Roman nomenclators pointed out to Roman candidates the names and merits of influential citizens, or as the prompter gives out cues for the remaining lines to a comedian, or as a certain youth called out to Philip of Macedon: 'Remember that you are mortal.' But this very criticism, this s'aviser, is not in our power or the choice of our will; it must first of all occur to our intellect, and it depends upon the present degree of our perfection. It is the business of the will to strive beforehand with all zeal, to prepare the mind well in advance. This can be done usefully, partly through a contemplation of the experiences of others, their injuries and dangers; partly by the use of our own experiences, which should if possible be free of danger, or at least involve only slight and negligible harm; and partly also by training the mind to follow a definite series and method when thinking, so that later the required attitude offers itself spontaneously, as it were. However, there are matters which escape us or do not occur to us through no fault of ours; in these we suffer from a defect, not of judgment, but of memory or of mental capacity, and so are not so much in error as in ignorance, since it is beyond Ollr power to know or to remember all that we will. This is not a matter to be discussed here. That sort of critical reflection by which we fight against a lack of attention will suffice. Whenever memory reports to us past proofs which may not have been valid, we should hold the confused recollection for suspect, and either repeat our inquiry if possible and if the matter is important or trust past proofs only if sufficient care has been given them.” (s. 387-8)

2016-09-19Normore. “The Necessity in Deduction”

“What it [Cartesian deduction] does preserve, I suggest, is certainty [rather than necessity]. If one begins a deduction with ‘true and known principles’ and one proceeds by ‘a continuous and uninterrupted movement of through in which each individual proposition is clearly intuited’, one reaches conclusions that are ‘known with certainty’. If we suppose that by ‘true and known principles’ Descartes means principles of which we are certain, then this description is of a certainty-preserving process. But we need not suppose that if the premises of a deduction are necessary either in the sense in which God’s nature is necessary or in the sense in which the eternal truths are necessary, then only conclusions that are necessary in the same sense could be validly deduced. […] If this is correct, Cartesian deduction is a process of a very different kind from what we now understand to be valid reasoning.” (445)

2016-09-20Sommer. Kommentar zu Nietzsches "Jenseits von Gut und Böse"

Finns kommentar om „es denkt“Gödde, Loukidelis & Zirfas. Nietzsche Und Die Lebenskunst: Ein Philosophisch-Psychologisches Kompendium

Loukidelis. "Es denkt"

En kommentar till paragrafen i boken.

Loukidelis. ”Nietzsche und die ’Logiker’” i Handbuch Nietzsche und die Wissenschaften

Talar om Spir som bakgrund till „es denkt“

Baigrie "Descartes' scientific illustrations"

2016-09-23

Mihali. “The Role of Freedom in Descartes’ Ethics of Belief”Försöker dels ge en bild av en absolut vilja, och de textuella skälen för detta; dels en ”ethics of belief”, och vilka som har företrätt en sådan läsning, där viljan blir helt central för Descartes.

Schopenhauer. ”Ideas Concerning the Intellect Generally and in All Respects”

§37ff innehåller intressanta passager om tänkande, och är en bra bakgrund för att förstå Nietzsche påstående att “en tanke kommer när den vill”. Skriver även om att vi inte kan bestämma när en tanke ska komma, utan endast förbereda oss för att motta dem.

Merrill. Augustus De Morgan and the logic of relations

“For over two thousand years, Euclidean geometry was justifiably viewed as the supreme example of demonstrative reasoning. As a demonstrative science, geometry uses rigorous logic to generate innumerable truths from a few evident first principles. During that same two thousand years, some type of syllogistic logic was commonly thought to be adequate for handling all correct deductions, even if it meant supplementing Aristotle's logic with some propositional logic such as the hypothetical syllogism.Amazingly, though, these two millennia saw virtually no interest in the question of whether syllogistic logic sufficed for Euclid's inferences. As Ian Mueller has shown, the origins of Greek mathematics and of Greek logic owe almost nothing to each other. Furthermore, until the late nineteenth century, the history of geometry shows no serious attempts to construe Euclidean geometry syllogistically, or to examine in detail even one Euclidean proof to see whether it could be treated syllogistically. When logicians or mathematicians did approach these issues, they did so in a cursory way and with little sense of the enormity of the issues at stake for logic and the philosophy of geometry. Even in the late nineteenth century, when modern symbolic logic was being developed, it was number theory, set theory and analysis that provided the stimulus, and not geometry. And all of this is so, despite the fact that geometry was the paradigm of demonstrative science for two thousand years.” (p. 11)

2016-10-12

Lambert Marie de RijkUN TOURNANT IMPORTANT DANS L'USAGE DU MOT IDEA CHEZ HENRI DE GAND

On « the epistemological turn in the Middle Ages » esp. the transformation of “idea” from Platonic conception to something pertaining to the Mind, either of God or Man, or both.

The Platonic Ideas as the Thoughts of God

Audrey N. M. Rich

Handlar om idéer som något I Guds medvetande.

2017-02-19

Dear. “Historiography of not-so-recent science”Om diskussionen kring användningen av termen “science” för verksamheter innan 1800-talet.http://journals.sagepub.com.ezproxy.its.uu.se/doi/pdf/10.1177/007327531205000203

Laursen & van der Zande. “Introduction to Carl Friedrich Bahrdt’s On Freedom of the Press and its Limits (1787)

Har en kort översikt över den tyska publicitets- och frihetsdiskussionen under 1700-talet; när själva diskussionen föddes (runt 1770). Som bakgrund till “kommunicerbarhet” hos Kant.

2016-11-28

Daniel Rosenberg. ”Joseph Priestley and the Graphic Invention of Modern Time”

”In historiography, the idea of time is expressed through a variety of figures, not the least of which is the line. Indeed, in temporal representation in general, the linear metaphor appears virtually everywhere. As W. J. T. Mitchell and others have argued, much of the language that we use to talk about time already implies this turn.1 In visual art, the same holds true: from the most ancient images of time to the most modern, the line appears as a central figure. The linear metaphor is ubiquitous in everyday visual representations, too, in almanacs, calendars, charts, and graphs of all sorts.2 So it comes as something of a surprise to discover that it was only quite recently that scholars first thought to represent chronological relationships among historical events by placing them on a measured timeline. This fact is not only surprising in retrospect: in the 1750s and 60s, when the modern timeline was first introduced, observers found it equally strange. ”

Stephen Boyd Davis Emma Bevan Aleksei Kudikov. “Just in time: defining historical chronographics”

Viktig text om uppkomsten av visualiseringen av tiden som en linje och andra relaterade teman.

Stephen Boyd Davis. “History on the Line: Time as Dimension”Samma tema som ovan.Kan visualisera tiden på många sätt: som linje. Men också cykliskt: tänk på själva urtavlan!

Johann Friedrich STRASS (övers. Bell). Descriptive Guide to the Stream of Time

Motsätter sig Priestleys rent geometriska representation, och betonar istället tidens som forsar fram. I olika hastighet. (Detta är dock ej än, vad det tycks mig – kolla närmare – en psykologisk modell.)

”However natural it may be to assist the perceptive faculty, in its assumption of abstract time, by the idea of a line, and however inseparable the sensible and mental objects may have become by the figurative method of speech; it is astonishing that upon this near advance, and with similar assistance from the delicate preciseness of language, the image of a Stream should not have presented itself to any one, whose consideration had been attracted to this object. The expression

of gliding, and rolling on; or of the rapid current, applied to time, are equally familiar to use with those of long and short. Neither does it require any great discernment to trace, as a farther exemplification of this assertion, in the rise and fall or empire, an allusion to the source of a river, and to the increasing rapidity of its currents, in proportion with the declivity of their channels towards the engulphing ocean. Nay, this metaphor, by presenting something more congenial to a common object of sense, and at the same time more agreeable in its variations to the nature of the abstract notion, gives greater liveliness to the ideas, and impresses events more forcibly upon the mind, than the stiff regularity of the straight line. Its diversified power, likewise, of separating the various currents into subordinate branches, or of uniting them into one vast ocean of power; of dispersing them a second time, but still in such a manner that they are always ready under the guidance of some great conqueror to converge again into one point, tends to render the idea by its beauty more attractive, by its simplicity more perspicuous, and by its resemblance more consistent. // Obvious as this must appear, the idea seems to have been first carried into execution with singular felicity by Mr. F. Strauss, Professor of History to the royal corps of Cadets at Berlin.” (8-10) (Från översättarens förord)

2016-12-08

Johann August Eberhard, Vorbereitung zur natürlichen Theologie

https://korpora.zim.uni-duisburg-essen.de/kant/eberhard/eberhard.html

Gud har inga härledningar:”Gott hat daher 1) keine Empfindungen, 2) keine Einbildungen, 3) keine abstracte, 4) keine symbolische Erkenntniss, 5) er macht keine Vernunftschlüsse, 6) er hat keine Leidenschaften; ob er gleich unsere Empfindungen, Einbildungen, Vernunftschlüsse, Leidenschaft en kennt. Da auch der unendliche Verstand Gottes durch nichts kann eingeschränkt werden, so kann Gott nicht die Weltseele sein. Denn die Seele wird in ihren Vorstellungen durch den Körper eingeschränkt.”Antagligen i förhållande till denna tanke som vi måste förstå följande poäng hos Kant. Wissen innefattar härledningar och kan alltså inte vara något hos Gud, som har direkt kunskap. Kunskap är inte opersonligt. Talas om Guds kunskap etc. Det måste vara att den alltid är direkt, omedelbar. Observera att Kant, direkt efter att ha avskilt Wissen, oproblematiskt använder ”weiss”.

“Alle diese Ausdrücke sind Mängel der Erkenntnis und unwürdig Gottes. Sagte ich sie von Menschen, so wären sie was Prächtiges, aber von Gott nicht. Von Gott müssen wir den Ausdruck Erkenntnis brauchen, nicht Wissen oder Meinen; denn das sind Eigenschaften des menschlichen Verstandes. Sage ich von Gott: er weiß alles Vergangene, sieht alles Gegenwärtige und weiß voraus alles Künftige, so ist das ÂnjðrwpopajðvV gesetzt und muß jðeoprepvV verstanden werden.” (Kant AA xxviii1271)

Nietzsche. Gay Science, §354.On 'the genius of the species'. - The problem of consciousness ( or rather,of becoming conscious of something) first confronts us when we beginto realize how much we can do without it; and now we are brought to

this initial realization by physiology and natural history (which havethus required two hundred years to catch up with Leibniz 's precocioussuspicion). 14 For we could think, feel, will, remember, and also 'act' inevery sense of the term, and yet none of all this would have to 'enter ourconsciousness' (as one says figuratively). All of life would be possiblewithout, as it were, seeing itself in the mirror; and still today, thepredominant part of our lives actually unfolds without this mirroring -of course also our thinking, feeling, and willing lives, insulting as it maysound to an older philosopher. To what end does consciousness exist atall when it is basically superfluous? If one is willing to hear my answerand its possibly extravagant conjecture, it seems to me that the subtletyand strength of consciousness is always related to a person's (oranimal's) ability to communicate; and the ability to communicate, in turn,to the need to communicate. The latter should not to be taken to meanthat precisely that individual who is a master at expressing his needsand at making them understood must also be the most dependent onothers in his needs. But for entire races and lineages, this seems to me tohold: where need and distress have for a long time forced people tocommunicate, to understand each other swiftly and subtly, there finallyexists a surplus of this power and art of expression, a faculty, so tospeak, which has slowly accumulated and now waits for an heir to spendit lavishly (the so-called artists are the heirs, as well as the orators,preachers, writers - all of them people who come at the end of a longchain, each of them 'born late' in the best sense of the term, and each ofthem, again, squanderers by nature). Assuming this observation iscorrect, I may go on to conjecture that consciousness in general hasdeveloped only under the pressure of the need to communicate; that at theoutset, consciousness was necessary, was useful, only between persons(particularly between those who commanded and those who obeyed);and that it has developed only in proportion to that usefulness.Consciousness is really just a net connecting one person with another -only in this capacity did it have to develop; the solitary and predatoryperson would not have needed it. That our actions, thoughts, feelings,and movements - at least some of them - even enter into consciousnessis the result of a terrible 'must' which has ruled over man for a longtime: as the most endangered animal, he needed help and protection, he

needed his equals; he had to express his neediness and be able to makehimself understood - and to do so, he first needed 'consciousness', i.e.

even to 'know' what distressed him, to 'know' how he felt, to 'know'what he thought. For, once again: man, like every living creature, isconstantly thinking but does not know it; the thinking which becomesconscious is only the smallest part of it, let's say the shallowest, worstpart - for only that conscious thinking takes place in words, that is, incommunication symbols; and this fact discloses the origin of consciousness.In short, the development of language and the development ofconsciousness (not of reason but strictly of the way in which we becomeconscious of reason) go hand in hand. One might add that not onlylanguage serves as a bridge between persons, but also look, touch, andgesture; without our becoming conscious of our sense impressions, ourpower to fix them and as it were place them outside of ourselves, hasincreased in proportion to the need to convey them to others by means ofsigns. The sign-inventing person is also the one who becomes ever moreacutely conscious of himself; for only as a social animal did man learn tobecome conscious of himself - he is still doing it, and he is doing itmore and more. My idea is clearly that consciousness actually belongsnot to man's existence as an individual but rather to the communityandherd-aspects of his nature; that accordingly, it is finely developedonly in relation to its usefulness to community or herd; and thatconsequently each of us, even with the best will in the world tounderstand ourselves as individually as possible, 'to know ourselves', willalways bring to consciousness precisely that in ourselves which is 'nonindividual',that which is 'average'; that due to the nature of consciousness- to the 'genius of the species' governing it - our thoughtsthemselves are continually as it were outvoted and translated back intothe herd perspective. At bottom, all our actions are incomparably andutterly personal, unique, and boundlessly individual, there is no doubt;but as soon as we translate them into consciousness, they no longer seemto be . .. This is what I consider to be true phenomenalism andperspectivism: that due to the nature of animal consciousness, the worldof which we can become conscious is merely a surface- and sign-world,a world turned into generalities and thereby debased to its lowestcommon denominator, - that everything which enters consciousnessthereby becomes shallow, thin, relatively stupid, general, a sign, aherd-mark; that all becoming conscious involves a vast and thorough

corruption, falsification, superficialization, and generalization. In theend, the growing consciousness is a danger; and he who lives among themost conscious Europeans even knows it is a sickness. As one mightguess, it is not the opposition between subject and object whichconcerns me here; I leave that distinction to those epistemologists whohave got tangled up in the snares of grammar (of folk metaphysics).Even less am I concerned with the opposition between 'thing in itself'and appearance: for we 'know' far too little to even be entitled to makethat distinction. We simply have no organ for knowing, for 'truth': we'know' (or believe or imagine) exactly as much as is useful to the humanherd, to the species: and even what is here called 'usefulness' is finallyalso just a belief, a fiction, and perhaps just that supremely fatalstupidity of which we some day will perish.

Böcker att läsa Jay, Songs of Experience (om erfarenhetsbegreppets historiska

framväxt). Proctor, Value-Free Science? (om objektivitetsbegreppets framväxt) Thomas Götselius. Själens medium: Skrift och subjekt i Nordeuropa

omkring 1500 (om hur skriftkulturen och tänkandet förändras i och med boktryckarkonsten)

States of Violence av Frederic Gros, Krzysztof (TRN) Fijalkowski, Michael (TRN) Richardson

A Philosophy of Walking av Frederic Gros, John (TRN) Howe, Clifford (ILT) Harper